A Davidson County jury has convicted decommissioned Metro
Police officer Jeffrey Poole of official misconduct and acquitted him of four
counts of raping a prostitute in December 2009.
Poole, who will be sentenced next month, faces up to six
years in prison.
He faces six other pending charges, including one of sexual
assault and one of aggravated child abuse, the latter stemming from an incident
involving his 16-year-old son.
Prosecutors accused Poole of raping a former prostitute at a
motel on Dickerson Road. Over the course of the trial, it was established that
Poole, 42, had given the woman rides when he was off duty.
Assistant District Attorney Rob McGuire noted in court that
the woman had originally reported that she was robbed, not raped, after
investigators interviewed the woman in connection with allegations that Poole
had inappropriate conduct with other women while on duty.
The woman, according to McGuire, thought she was about to be
arrested. Instead, Poole took his gun out of his holster, set it down, then
demanded that the woman perform sex acts, McGuire said.
During the trial, Scruggs introduced evidence from vehicle
location technology, which tracked Poole’s patrol car. The data undercut the
state’s assertion that Poole had gone to the motel.
Dickerson Road was Poole’s assigned patrol area, and he was
familiar with a number of the prostitutes who worked in the area.
The Tennessean does not identify victims of sexual assault.
Scruggs, during the trial’s opening arguments, said the
victim was a career criminal whose recall could not be trusted. For example,
she could not recall which day the alleged rape occurred — only that it
happened sometime in December 2009.
"I'm disappointed that they didn't convict him of the
rapes because I believe with every fiber of my being that he was guilty,"
McGuire said Thursday. "But the official misconduct charge says to me that
they obviously thought he was doing something wrong."
Police arrested Poole in August 2010 on a 12-count
indictment. He was acquitted of sexual battery and official misconduct in a
trial involving another woman the following November.
Poole was decommissioned and ordered to stay away from
police department facilities three months before a grand jury leveled the
indictment, in which he was accused of sexually assaulting four women, three of
them with histories of prostitution, while on duty.